Serious Money

In The Proper Perspective,

Even Big Bucks Donald Trump Is No More Than A Piker.

October 12, 1988|By Michael Kilian.

WRITING FROM MCLEAN, VA. — Among the many sensible upper-middle-class values instilled in me by my father was a healthy disdain for Mere Money.

He thought it quite the right thing to want to have Enough Money-the club dues, after all, have to come from somewhere. But unless one is born with it, one should never lust after Big Money, he said, because that would mean having to go out into the kick-bite-scratch dog-eat-dog world of wheelie-dealie business and devote all of one`s life to making it.

``If all you want to do in life is make money,`` my father said, ``it`s very easy, but it has to be all you want to do.``

All too vulgar and degrading. And one would never have time for the opera.

I, of course, took his advice, and, since I don`t have to spend all my waking hours grubbing around for the green stuff, I have lots of time for more culturally enriching activities, such as mowing my own lawn.

If I`d devoted my life to piling up bucks, I`d have no time for the opera. (Who could sit there enjoying ``Aida`` when there were deals languishing uncut?) Worse, no matter how much money I made, if making money was all that mattered, I could never make enough.

Because somebody would always have more.

Consider Fortune magazine`s recent list of 1988 billionaires. Consider just one entry: Donald Trump, a man so devoted to money-grubbing that I think he`s had a cellular phone implanted in his head so he can cut deals in his sleep.

Trump: What a card

As he lets us know almost weekly through newspaper ads, Trump has so much money he can afford to buy the world`s largest privately owned used yacht and New York`s most pigeon-dropping-covered deluxe hotel. He has so much status he can now count Chicago`s inimitable Sugar Rautbord and Dreadfully Fashionable First Friend Jerry Zipkin as his chums.

According to Fortune, after subtracting debts (I think he may be buying the yacht on time), Trump still has a whopping fortune of $1.3 billion.

But where is he on the list? Way down in the sub-basement, around 128!

He`s only a piddling $300 million ahead of spud and pig king John Richard Simplot, the Idahoan who, after growing up in a log cabin and dropping out of 8th grade, made a billion by figuring out how to feed pigs potatoes and selling the leftover parts of both.

Trump`s $1.3 billion doesn`t even put him in a class with $1.4 billion flea-collar, birdseed and creepy-personal-ad baron Leonard Stern, owner of the Hartz Pet Supply Co. and the Village Voice.

Or $1.4 billion Sid and Mickey Arison of Miami, commodores of the Carnival Cruise Line love-boat fleet, whose seagoing pleasures include seven- day beer-drinking and shuffleboard contests. Can Trump`s used yacht match that?

Why, in that $1.4 billion class, one even finds Leona and Harry Helmsley, the innkeeper baron and baroness whose magazine advertisements feature former cigarette model Leona royally arrayed and proclaim ``the only palace where the queen stands guard.`` Harry and Leona were recently indicted on charges of defrauding the government by declaring estate repairs as deductible business expenses, and Leona conceivably could end up in ``the only place where the queen has guards.``

Think of all the deals Trump is going to have to cut to get into the $1.5 billion class of twang king Ed Gaylor, whose cultural empire includes the Grand Ole Opry and, yes, one third of the Texas Rangers baseball team (or is it basketball?).

Who`s kidding whom?

Or the $1.5 billion class of 75-year-old Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, whose divorce from his first wife cost him $42 million and who is divorcing his nubile 32-year-old third wife even though she claims the child she just bore is his?

All these guys seem mere pikers compared with $2.6 billion Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis, the descendant of a Holy Roman Empire mailman who now owns about 10 percent of Bavaria. On his 60th birthday, his sweet 28- year-old bride presented him with the touching gift of an enormous cake decorated with 60 phallic symbols.

Even if Trump is able to surpass the $3 billion of Racing Form king Walter Annenberg, the $3 billion of shopping mall emperor Alfred Taubman and the $3.1 billion of whiskey lords Edgar and Charles Bronfman-whose Canadian distillery empire was conveniently founded during Prohibition-he`d still have to top the $4 billion of Jaber Ahmed Al Sabah.

No, Jaber is not a basketball player. He and his family own Kuwait. But he wisely invested heavily abroad-wisely, as Fortune wryly notes, until abroad got hit by last year`s stock-market crash. Even so, $4 billion ain`t Hartz Mountain canary feed.

Of course, if Trump`s Atlantic City casino has a couple of good years, he might find himself in the $8.7 billion class of the world`s richest woman, England`s Queen Elizabeth. But if he and wife Ivana should start going around in a gilded carriage as the queen does, I suspect people will merely mistake it for one of those hansom cabs that are always parked outside his Plaza Hotel.